Download Framework for Curriculum Design

Framework for Curriculum Design
Understanding by Design (UbD)
Understanding by Design (UbD) is a rigorous model for thinking, organizing learning, and setting priorities
for students and teachers. It takes the backward design approach to developing a curriculum or unit that
begins with the end in mind and moves toward that end (p. 338). This paradigm includes the following
components:
Big Ideas: Big ideas are the core concepts, principles, theories, and processes that serve as the
focal point of curricula, instruction, and assessment. They are the final destination of an inquiry
(pp. 338-339, Wiggins & McTighe, 2005).
Enduring Understandings: In UbD, enduring understandings are written in full-sentence
statements, describing what students should understand about the topic based on big ideas. The
stem “Students will understand that…” provides a practical tool for teachers to facilitate students
to reach understandings that are enduring and transferable to new situations (p. 342, Wiggins &
McTighe, 2005).
Essential Questions: Essential questions pose as guides that promote inquiry and the
uncoverage of a subject. They are the multiple paths that students and teachers can take in
order to reach the destination. Essential questions do not yield single straightforward answers
but produce different plausible responses. They can be either overarching or topical on the unit
level in scope (p. 342, Wiggins & McTighe, 2005).
By using the principle of UbD and guided by big ideas, enduring understandings, and essential questions,
this Delaware Visual & Performing Arts Statewide Curriculum promotes discovery-based learning and
teaching. Together, learners and teachers assume the responsibility of uncovering and connecting
pieces of information, knowledge, and skills central to the discipline.
Revised Bloom’s Taxonomy
The Statewide Recommended Curriculum for Visual & Performing Arts reflects the cognitive levels of the
Revised Bloom’s Taxonomy.
The Taxonomy of Educational Objectives was created by Benjamin Bloom in the 1950s as a means of
expressing qualitatively different kinds of thinking. Bloom’s Taxonomy has since been adapted for
classroom use as a planning tool and continues to be one of the most universally applied models across
all levels of schooling and in all areas of study.
During the 1990s, Lorin Anderson (a former student of Benjamin Bloom) led a team of cognitive
psychologists in revisiting the taxonomy with the view to examining the relevance of the taxonomy as we
enter the 21st century.
As a result of the investigation a number of significant improvements were made to the existing structure:
1. The names of six major categories were changed from noun to verb forms. The reasoning
behind this is that the taxonomy reflects different forms of thinking, and thinking is an active
process. Verbs describe actions, not nouns, hence the change.
2. The knowledge category was renamed. Knowledge is an outcome or product of thinking not a
form of thinking per se. Consequently, the word knowledge was inappropriate to describe a
category of thinking and was replaced with the word remembering instead.
3. Comprehension and synthesis were re-titled to understanding and creating respectively, in order
to better reflect the nature of the thinking defined in each category.
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4. The major categories were ordered in terms of increased complexity. As a result, the order of
synthesis (create) and evaluation (evaluate) have been interchanged. This is in deference to the
popularly held notion that if one considers the taxonomy as a hierarchy reflecting increasing
complexity, then creative thinking (i.e., creating level of the revised taxonomy) is a more complex
form of thinking than critical thinking (i.e., evaluating level of the new taxonomy). Put quite
simply, one can be critical without being creative (i.e., judge an idea and justify choices), but
creative production often requires critical thinking (i.e., accepting and rejecting ideas on the path
to creating a new idea, product or way of looking at things.)
Michael Pohl - http://eprentice.sdsu.edu/J03OJ/miles/Bloomtaxonomy(revised)1.htm
Visual Comparison of the Two Taxonomies
Bloom et al 1956
Anderson & Krathwohl et al 2000
Leslie Owens Wilson- http://www.uwsp.edu/education/lwilson/curric/newtaxonomy.htm
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